With so many people joining Diablo IV’s servers during the game’s first closed beta, it’s no wonder Activision Blizzard had to set up a queue…

A common problem in Blizzard games is that the connection is preceded by a digital queue, which usually has to be implemented because the servers would be overloaded without it. The game would become unplayable for everyone. So it’s a precaution, but you must admit that waiting can be annoying, especially for a game that could be played offline. However, after the PC version of Diablo III, the publisher requires server connectivity on all platforms in the sequel so that it can’t even be pirated (which would have the positive side of preserving the game).

Eurogamer interviewed Diablo’s general manager Rod Fergusson, who said that over 1 million players had played the game during the first beta and hopes that even more will try the game during the second test, which is open to everyone. During the first test, six hotfixes were released that fixed dozens of bugs, and the team is optimistic that Diablo IV will be much more stable when it launches in June. (We’ll put money upfront that it won’t be. There’s always a problem.)

“Of course, the idea is that there are no queues – that is where we want to be. […] Sometimes, queues are part of how many servers are available and those sorts of things, but the other side of queues is around protecting the services. Sometimes you’ll put a queue in place just so that if there’s one particular service – like writing to the database – you’re trying not to overwhelm. […] And that’s actually what happened [with the early access beta]: we actually turned up the queues a little bit to protect this while we were working, and then, once we did the work, we were able to start dialing [server capacity] up and dialing it up, and the queue was going back down again,” Fergusson said.

There will be no split-screen co-op on PC (Fergusson hinted that it’s because of difficulties around logging in to more than one Battle.net account on a PC at a time), character types will still be balanced, but the level ceiling for some classes will be different. Diablo IV’s open beta will begin on March 24, with the store version arriving on June 6 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Source: WCCFTech